


Dead Man Walking

by cyan13



Series: An_Origin's_Change [3]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Origin SMP
Genre: Origin Smp - Freeform, Other, Phantom!Wilbur, Phil is worried dad, Sickbur, beta cause we can, fight me about it-, i kept thinking about Danny Phantom, i love this au more than life itself rn, sorta sick fic, tommy is a rooster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:48:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29817618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyan13/pseuds/cyan13
Summary: Wilbur had been sick for about a week now, had been feeling like utter crap to top it off. He didn't remember most of it, only stabbing pain and feeling like his head had turned into a pillow. Then he woke up and things took an interesting turn.
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Series: An_Origin's_Change [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2190999
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69
Collections: An_Origin's_Change





	Dead Man Walking

**Author's Note:**

> Hey imma back before the end of the week! Yeah for my brain wanting to write!
> 
> In this part of the series, we take a look at Wilbur and his Origin Change...

Wilbur was 16 when he got sick. 

It was a case of Hay Fever. No one knew how it happened.

Maybe it was from falling asleep out in their small barn. Maybe he had gotten it from someone in the village. Maybe it just manifested to tick off the whole family.

Whatever the case was, he felt like absolute crap. 

His father placed a cool rag on his forehead, trying to combat the fever the teen had. Wilbur had about three blankets wrapped around him, trying to keep warm. 

His head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton, like a cloud taking the place of his brain. Like trying to see through thick fog. 

The teen didn't remember most of what happened that week, just sleeping and trying not to overheat while trying to stay cool. 

Flashes of memory of seeing his father's worried look, switching a rag for a colder one. Feeling his small brother curl up beside him, feathers tickling his side and arms. 

The feeling of warmth was something he was familiar with. 

Be it the blankets, his brother, or his fever. He was warm, and that was all he knew. 

"Don't know when his fever is going to break," he heard one time after waking up. It sounded like his father's voice, and he sounded tired. "It’s been steady for a good few days now."

He fell back asleep after that. 

One time, Wilbur woke up with a stabbing pain in his chest and his throat feeling like a lump of coal, as if he had tried to eat the ash-covered rock. It confused him, but his mind was already overtaken by sleep once more.

The next time he woke up, he felt weird. Not like the sweat that stained his bed, or the lukewarm rag on his forehead. It was like a weight pressed on his chest, like whenever Tommy would flop on top of him after a nightmare or just wanting for the teen to wake up.

Maybe it was his lungs feeling like lumps of lead, trying to lift bricks. The ghosting feeling of being held down. 

His limbs didn't want to move, his body feeling too sluggish. Too slow to react to what he wanted them to do, too slow to try and help him. 

Even try to roll onto his stomach was difficult, like his body didn't want to do as it was told. 

He fell asleep peacefully for the first time in a while after that. 

Wilbur woke to someone shaking him, could hear muffled crying. Or at least, it sounded like crying. 

"Wilby, wake up," that was Tommy's voice. He sounded sad, and the teen wanted to see why the kid was crying but his eyes felt heavy. Feathers brushed against his arm, as two small hands tried to shake his brother awake. "You need to wake up, Dad is sad and it's making me sad and you won't wake up. Why won't you wake up?"

He wanted to answer his brother, wanted to tell him he was awake. 

But it was like his voice had left, his throat stuffed full of cotton, drying it shut, fog clouding his mind. His tongue stuck to the top of his mouth too weak to try and open his lips to utter any words. Wilbur tried to let out a sound, anything to get his brother to stop crying, to let him know he was ok. 

The weight in his chest seemed to have moved to pain, akin to a stabbing feeling. He tried to roll on his side, to ease the pain. All he felt was the feeling of falling, like dropping down from a tall height. A gasp and someone was grabbing his arm. 

“Tommy, I thought I told you to let him be, he’ll wake up on his own,” said a familiar voice, His father, he thinks. He sounded close, probably the one holding him up. The teen still wondering why the world felt like it was falling and now felt grounded. Maybe it was his mind playing games with his sick-ridden mind, the feeling of his father’s hold on his arms keeping him from falling from the sky once more. “Go eat your lunch, son. I’ll change his cold rag and meet you downstairs ok?” 

The sound of small footfalls and a door closing prompted Wilbur to open his eyes slowly. The world felt bright, like trying to stare into the sun. beside him, holding onto his arm, was his father.

The man was wearing his normal gray cloak, a green nightshirt underneath. He looked tired, a common sight these days. 

“Wil?” he was whispering like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. “You wake son?” 

The teen gave a weak shrug before trying to sit up. His sides hurt from the movement like he had been run over by one of the carts in the village, which had happened before. Or someone had kicked him in the chest. 

Wilbur thought his lungs had stopped taking in the air around them. “Wha’ happened?”   
  
“You had a fever, think it might have been Hay Fever, not completely sure,” his dad told him, helping his son sitting up in the small bed. The man ran a hand through the teen sweat-ridden curls. “Something might have happened while you were out cold, son.” 

The man gestured to his side, where Wilbur realized there was a new weight there. Even with his head full of cotton, the teen realized something was wrong, very much wrong. 

He wasn’t wearing his normal yellow sweater, or even the nightshirt he would normally wear. The sight around his sides, where his ribs would be, caused him to panic. Around his sides were two rib-like bones sticking out from his chest, white bone curling in a mimic fashion of a rib-cage.

“Wha?” his voice, as dry as his throat felt, came out like a whisper. He glanced up at his dad. “How?”

The man looked close to tears. “I don’t know, son,” was his response. “You got sick and the medicine I was giving you didn’t seem to work and then you were screaming in your sleep, and then those things appeared, and then you fell through the floor. You started  _ burning _ when sunlight and-”   
  
Wilbur cut his father off of his rant by hugging the man, tears in his eyes.    
  
Neither spoke a word, too wrapped in trying not to cry. They both knew this wasn’t something normal that happens when you're sick, you don’t just grow ribs outside of your body. 

It was what the land was starting to call “The Change”, stories of normal people growing new features or abilities out of nowhere. No one knew what caused it, villages preferring to cast away or even try and kill those with The Change. 

The door burst open, and in came a ball of blond hair and yellow feathers, running over to the bed before climbing up to sit next to Wilbur. Tommy grew a lot since he sprouted wings on his arms the year before, now having to stay home so as to hide from the village.

The boy was wearing his normal red and white shirt, his wings hanging off his arms like a blanket. His curly blond hair was a mop on his hair, with his feather-covered ears sticking out from the sides. Flopping behind him, was a tail of tall feathers, a dark green color. It was a bit of time before any of the family realized the eight-year-old almost acted like a rooster in terms.

It was the screeching in the morning that set that idea in stone.

“WILBY YOUR AWAKE!” The blond screamed before practically tackling his brother into a hug. The motion causing a spike of pain in his sides, not used to the ribs like bones on his chest. The boy seemed to notice, pulling away quickly with a worried look on his. “Sorry.” 

Wilbur weakly chuckled, before wrapping an arm over his brother’s smaller form, hugging the small kid to his side. Being mindful of his sore sides. “It’s ok, Toms, you didn’t mean to,” the teen said hoarsely. 

“Wil, why are your eyes different?” 

It was an innocent question, one that any child might ask someone, but it made Wilbur confused. Why would his eyes be any different than before? They have always been dark brown, something their father had said he got from their mother. He took after his mother a lot, he soon learned as he got older. 

Both his brother and him had gotten their mother’s curls. Tommy took after their dad, with blond hair and bright blue eyes. Wilbur took after their mom, with dark brown hair and eyes. And the thought of something being wrong, that he might look different now (even with the new rib things poking out of his chest) worried the hell out of the sixteen-year-old. 

He only had memories of his mom before she passed away, the teen remembers much more than his baby brother. 

The teen stood to his feet, annoying his father’s call for him to sit back down. He hobbled over to the mirror he kept leaning against the wall, usually there to help him deal with his mop of curls, or making sure he didn’t look like death from an all-nighter. 

Staring at the reflective surface, Wilbur took in what he looked like. He had been in bed for most of the week, it was most likely that he would look like utter crap. 

And to say he didn’t look like crap is a lie. 

His hair was a ratted mess, from laying and tossing and turning for most of the week. Curly bangs hung over his left eye, which blinked back at him. Tommy had been right, his eyes did look a bit weirder than normal. Instead of their normal dark brown, Wilbur could see an almost neon green color, glowing almost, mixed in. like flicks little lights. 

Wilbur knew things would never be the same, he knew that the day Niki grew gills. He knew that the day he woke up to his brother growing in wings. He knew that the second he saw the weird rib things around his chest. 

Nothing would be the same again, not for a long, long time.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is [sunflower-named-cyan ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/sunflower-named-cyan) if you wanna ask questions or anything really.


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